International Business Machines Corp.(IBM) has promoted its long time senior vice president for cloud and cognitive software Arvind Krishna as the CEO with effect from April 6, 2020. Arvind Krishan will replace Ginni Rometty who has decided to move on as executive chairman till her retirement at the end of this year. The 57-year old former IIT Kanpur alumnus was one of the main dealmakers for the company’s acquisitions of Red Hat. He had proposed the plans for acquisition to the then CEO Ginni Rometty and the board, suggesting hybrid cloud was the best bet for IBM to come up terms with the new age technology and sustain growth over a long period of time. His role was also instrumental for some other project developments at IBM such as artificial intelligence, cloud and quantum computing.
Arvind Krishna led cloud and cognitive software division of IBM saw revenue growth of 9 per cent in the Q4 of 2019. Krishna is an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur and completed his PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois in 1990. His journey with IBM started the same year. His Linkedin profile shows he has spent all his working life in IBM with roles spanning from a member in the Watson research team to serving as general manager and senior vice president of several businesses in the last decade.
“He is an authentic leader who lives the values of IBM and has taken on ever-increasing responsibilities across the company,” and returned IBM’s cloud and software business to growth, IBM said in the statement. “Through his multiple experiences running businesses in IBM, Arvind has built an outstanding track record of bold transformations and proven business results and is an authentic, values-driven leader. He is a brilliant technologist who has played a significant role in developing our key technologies such as artificial intelligence, cloud, quantum computing and blockchain,” Rometty said in the news release.” said the outgoing IBM CEO Ginni Rometty said in the company’s release.
